New to Mead making

[NovaTheMeadFaun]

I am new to mead making made my first batch 1 gallon carboy and it came out great.
Got a 3 gallon carboy started my 2nd batch , It had a strong fermentation Tons of bubbling and foaming after about 2 weeks it just stopped. Everything settled to the bottom and no bubbles to be seen anywhere. Can it be done? It is in a temperature controlled room.

 

[Sobby]

It may be done fermenting, but not necessarily ready to be enjoyed.

If there aren't any bubbles whatsoever then your ferment is probably done. Rack into a secondary pull a sample to get a gravity reading and taste some. If its got the alcohol level you want and the sweetness you want..then its done. If its too dry you may need to backsweeten. Although back sweetening can cause it to start fermenting again if the yeast have not yet reached its alcohol tolerance.

If its exactly where you want it you will have to add potassium metabisulfate and potassium sorbate to kill off the yeast and prevent reproduction. This will stabilize your mead and allow you to add sweetness to taste without starting another ferment.

It may also need to age to really get the flavor your looking for. This depends on the yeast you used and the ingredients in your batch.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi NovaTheMeadFaun - and welcome.
What was the starting gravity? What is the gravity today? Knowing these two data tells you a great deal about where your mead is. Counting bubbles tells you zip. If you don't have a hydrometer your next step is to buy one, stat.

 

[NovaTheMeadFaun]

Ok got a hydrometer and it floated at 1.00 the top blue line where it says wine.
My question now is ? I do not see activity what should I do let it go and do another reading next week to see if there is any changes?

 

[bernardsmith]

OK.. so first thing is that hydrometers are normally read to three places after the decimal which suggests that your reading is about 1.000 and a reading of 1.000 is exactly the same as distilled water. So you have nothing in the solution to make it more dense than water. OK - so how to understand how that is possible? Well, if your original solution was honey and water then for every gallon of liquid 1 lb of honey would have increased the gravity (the density) by 35 points (1.035) then there are only two possible reasons why the reading is at 1.000. One is that you are misreading the hydrometer. And that is possible. But the other is that almost all the sugar in the honey has been converted to alcohol and CO2 and that is what you want. In other words, you have successfully fermented your first mead.

I say, "almost all the sugar" because as I said, water has a nominal density of 1.000 but alcohol is less dense than water so you might expect that the reading might fall below 1.000 to perhaps .996 or thereabouts. Now, that is very "dry" as drinks go - which is to say there would be hardly any perception of sweetness altogether. But you can stabilize this and back sweeten it before you bottle this mead.

What to do now? I would rack (transfer) this mead into a sanitized carboy , one that is filled right up into the neck so that there is no "headroom" to speak of between the top of the mead and the bung (and airlock) and then you want to let this mead age a few weeks or months to let the yeast clean up after themselves: they produce lots of compounds during fermentation many of which are not wonderful to taste but if given enough time the yeast will consume those compounds leaving you with a delicious mead.

 

[NovaTheMeadFaun]

Thank you for your help

 

[Leerda]

Hello all I am new here bit I have been doing mead for a while I am on my 17th 1 gallon mix today and I have just mixed up 3 and a half lb of honey from Slovakia and EC -1118 LALVIN yeast at 11.40 am today and the air lock is bubbling like mad and the time is now 13.42 so how many weeks should this take to be all done ready to rerack please

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Leerda - and welcome. How long should it take before you should rack? ...Oh.. I dunno..about as long as it takes. You need to get an hydrometer and not a clock (the time is not really very relevant) or a calendar. Yeast is a living organism and the time it takes a colony of yeast to ferment through a batch of honey is dependent on many factors. Best way to know is to measure the change in density (gravity) of the solution. When it reaches about 1.005 then is the time to rack.

 

[Leerda]

Hi Leerda - and welcome. How long should it take before you should rack? ...Oh.. I dunno..about as long as it takes. You need to get an hydrometer and not a clock (the time is not really very relevant) or a calendar. Yeast is a living organism and the time it takes a colony of yeast to ferment through a batch of honey is dependent on many factors. Best way to know is to measure the change in density (gravity) of the solution. When it reaches about 1.005 then is the time to rack.

hello and thank you for you reply what do you think would 5lb of honey be to much for a 1 gallon demijohn thanks lee

 

[bernardsmith]

There is always a good reason for any ingredient or action undertaken in wine or mead making. What is the reason for using 5 lbs of honey to make 1 gallon of mead? The starting gravity would be about 1.175 which is a potential ABV of 22.9%. Can your yeast handle that amount of alcohol? Can any yeast? Can any yeast even begin to ferment any sugar in that kind of concentration of sugar? (see osmotic shock)

 

[Leerda]

There is always a good reason for any ingredient or action undertaken in wine or mead making. What is the reason for using 5 lbs of honey to make 1 gallon of mead? The starting gravity would be about 1.175 which is a potential ABV of 22.9%. Can your yeast handle that amount of alcohol? Can any yeast? Can any yeast even begin to ferment any sugar in that kind of concentration of sugar? (see osmotic shock)

i started of with 4lb of honey and the mix started fermenting and then i added 1lb of honey a few days late with some yeast nutrient and then leave it for a few months then rerack.
what do you think please, its all learning

 

[bernardsmith]

What was the gravity when you added the additional honey? What is the current gravity? Assuming that the yeast is able to survive in that concentration of sugar (and that is a HUGE assumption) if you think making a mead that has about 23% ABV is going to taste something other than rocket fuel and you enjoy what looks to be a very unbalanced mead (mead making is all about balance and balance is all about ensuring that flavor, alcohol level, mouthfeel, acidity, etc all complement each other rather than fight one another) then what you are making sounds good. Personally, I don't think your mead will be in balance and personally, I usually aim for meads at between 6 - 12% alcohol. But to each their own.
It IS all "learning" but IMO you want to have a target at which you are aiming rather than draw a circle around where the arrow you fired landed to call that circle a bull's eye. In other words, a better way to learn might be to look for a "recipe" for a traditional mead, follow that and see how well you managed to make that mead taste.

 

[Leerda]

i get what you are saying so what would you say to 3lb honey to 1 gallon and a yeast like lalvin k1-v1116 would be like.
and thank you for all your help.

 

[bernardsmith]

Again.. There is always - ALWAYS - a good reason for any ingredient in a mead - and that includes the yeast. Why would you choose a champagne yeast that is incredibly aggressive? Which is to say that not only does it tend to blow off flavors and aromas, but it does not add any character of its own to a mead or wine... Sure, lots of novice mead makers for some reason choose EC -1118 but I don't really understand why (unless they think that that is the yeast to use because it has an enormous tolerance for the temperature at which it ferments or they think that EC -1118 can handle very high amounts of alcohol... but neither reason is a good reason (lower temperatures make for better meads and high ABV meads tend to be totally out of balance and are full of fusel alchols that can take years - YEARS to become drinkable. Bottom line: I would choose a less aggressive yeast D47 or 71B or even an ale yeast before I would use EC-1118. EC-1118 is best suited to prime a mead to make the mead sparkling AFTER fermentation has long ended and you are adding a drop of yeast and some priming sugar to each bottle. But that is me. I am sure others on this forum use EC-1118 for everything.

 

[Leerda]

when i read you reply it just makes so much sence and this weekend i shall do a mix of so 2.8lb of honey raw from my mate and use a low alcohol fruity hedge row yeast and i have just got a hydrometer so i can check the gravity.
so once i have mixed the honey and water take a reading then add the yeast and then take readings every few weeks does this sound right, sorry for ask silly thing.
when are you based.
thank you bernardsmith

 

[bernardsmith]

Don't know that you need to take a reading "every few weeks". You can expect the fermentation to take anywhere from a few days to a about 3 weeks (lots of factors affect the length of time it takes a colony of yeast to ferment all the sugar - temperature, the viability of the yeast, the number of yeast cells, the amount of nutrients in the must, the amount of honey in solution to name just a few factors). You might want to monitor what the yeast is doing after 7 days then after 10 and so see if you need to monitor the changes in gravity again and if so, when.

 

[Johan]

Just "Brewed up" 2 one-gallon batches of mead/melomel. First one has dried orange peel and orange blossom honey. The other has dried elderberries and clover honey. This is my 1st attempt at mead, but I've been making sparkling cider for some time. My friendly neighborhood HBS has a Mead Day in August and I want to bring these.
I want to bottle condition these to make them carbonated. Does anyone have ant experience/success doing this?